High Court Ruling Urged on Peer-to-Peer Networks

Movie studios and record labels asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday to overturn a ruling that peer-to-peer networks cannot be held liable when their users copy music and movies without permission.

Dozens of entertainment industry companies asked the court to reverse an appeals court decision that has prevented them from shutting down networks such as Grokster and Morpheus that they say encourage millions of computer users to copy music and movies free rather than buy them.

The entertainment industry managed to shut down the first file-trading network, Napster. But Grokster and other computer networks that have sprung up in its wake say their decentralized design prevents them from controlling user behavior.

The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in August that peer-to-peer networks cannot be sued for copyright infringement because their products can be used for legitimate purposes.

“These companies have expressly designed their businesses to avoid all legal liability, with the full knowledge that over 90% of the material traversing their applications belongs to someone else,” said Dan Glickman, president of the Motion Picture Assn. of America.

A spokesman for a trade group that represents Morpheus and other peer-to-peer networks said he did not think the Supreme Court would overturn the decision.

The digital-media landscape has shifted significantly in the last several years. Roxio Inc. has resurrected Napster as an industry-sanctioned pay service, competing with Apple Computer Inc.’s iTunes and other services that have sold millions of songs.

But traffic on file-trading networks has continued to climb even as record labels have sued about 5,000 users for alleged copyright infringement. Hollywood also has lobbied Congress to broaden copyright laws.